Original Teachings of the Buddha

Pre-sectarian Buddhism, also called early Buddhism, the earliest Buddhism, original Buddhism, and primitive Buddhism, is Buddhism as theorized to have existed before the various Early Buddhist schools developed, around 250 BCE (followed by later subsects of Buddhism).

The contents and teachings of this pre-sectarian Buddhism must be deduced or re-constructed from the earliest Buddhist texts, which by themselves are already sectarian. The whole subject remains intensely debated by scholars, not all of whom believe a meaningful reconstruction is possible.

"Early Buddhism" may also be used for considerably later periods.

Name

Various terms are being used to refer to the earliest period of Buddhism:
* "Pre-sectarian Buddhism"
* "Early Buddhism",
* "The earliest Buddhism",
* "Original Buddhism",
* "The Buddhism of the Buddha himself."
* Precanonical Buddhism
* Primitive Buddhism

Some Japanese scholars refer to the subsequent period of the early Buddhist schools as ''sectarian Buddhism''.

Timespan

Pre-sectarian Buddhism may refer to the earliest Buddhism, the ideas and practices of Gautama Buddha himself. It may also refer to early Buddhism as existing until the first documented split in the sangha. According to Lambert Schmithausen, it is "the canonical period prior to the development of different schools with their different positions."

Contrary to the claim of doctrinal stability, early Buddhism was a dynamic movement. Pre-sectarian Buddhism may have included or incorporated other Śramaṇic schools of thought, as well as Vedic and Jain ideas and practices.

The period of "Early Buddhism" in the sense of pre-sectarian Buddhism is considered by scholars such as Paul J. Griffiths and Steven Collins to be from the time of the historical Buddha to the reign of Ashoka (c. 268 to 232 BCE). The first documented split occurred, according to most scholars, between the second Buddhist council and the third Buddhist council. Lamotte and Hirakawa both maintain that the first schism in the Buddhist sangha occurred during the reign of Ashoka. According to scholar Collett Cox "most scholars would agree that even though the roots of the earliest recognized groups predate Aśoka, their actual separation did not occur until after his death."

The first post-schismatic groups are often stated to be the Sthavira nikāya and the Mahāsāṃghika. Eventually, eighteen different schools came into existence. The later Mahayana schools may have preserved ideas which were abandoned by the "orthodox" Theravada, such as the Three Bodies doctrine, the idea of consciousness (''vijñāna'') as a continuum, and devotional elements such as the worship of saints.

Earliest Buddhism and the Śramaṇa movement

Pre-sectarian Buddhism was originally one of the śramaṇic movements. The time of the Buddha was a time of urbanisation in India, and saw the growth of the ''śramaṇas'', wandering philosophers that had rejected the authority of ''Vedas'' and Brahmanic priesthood, intent on escaping ''saṃsāra'' through various means, which involved the study of ascetic practices, and ethical behavior.

The ''śramaṇas'' gave rise to different religious and philosophical schools, among which pre-sectarian Buddhism itself, Yoga and similar schools of Hinduism, Jainism, Ājīvika, Ajñana and Cārvāka were the most important, and also to popular concepts in all major Indian religions such as ''saṃsāra'' (endless cycle of birth and death) and ''moksha'' (liberation from that cycle). Nevertheless, despite the success that these wandering philosophers and ascetics had obtained by spreading ideas and concepts that would soon be accepted by all religions of India, the orthodox schools of Hindu philosophy (''āstika'') opposed to śramaṇic schools of thought and refuted their doctrines as "heterodox" (''nāstika''), because they refused to accept the epistemic authority of ''Vedas''.

The ideas of ''saṃsāra'', ''karma'' and rebirth show a development of thought in Indian religions: from the idea of single existence, at the end of which one was judged and punished and rewarded for one's deeds, or ''karma''; to multiple existences with reward or punishment in an endless series of existences; and then attempts to gain release from this endless series. This release was the central aim of the Śramaṇa movement. Vedic rituals, which aimed at entrance into heaven, may have played a role in this development: the realisation that those rituals did not lead to an everlasting liberation led to the search for other means.

Scholarship and methodology

Earliest Buddhism can only be deduced from the various Buddhist canons now extant, which are all already sectarian collections. As such any reconstruction is tentative. One method to obtain information on the oldest core of Buddhism is to compare the oldest extant versions of the Theravadin Pāli Canon, the surviving portions of the scriptures of Sarvastivada, Mulasarvastivada, Mahīśāsaka, Dharmaguptaka and other schools, and the Chinese āgamas and other surviving portions of other early canons (such as the Gandharan texts). Early proto-Mahayana texts which contain nearly identical material to that of the Pali Canon such as the Salistamba Sutra are also further evidence.

The beginning of this comparative study began in the 19th century, Samuel Beal published comparative translations of the Pali patimokkha and the Chinese Dharmaguptaka pratimoksa (1859), showing they were virtually identical. He followed this up with comparisons between the Chinese sutras and the Pali suttas in 1882, accurately predicting that "when the Vinaya and Āgama collections are thoroughly examined, I can have little doubt we shall find most if not all the Pali Suttas in Chinese form." In the following decades various scholars continued to produce a series of comparative studies, such as Anesaki, Akanuma (who composed a complete catalogue of parallels), Yin Shun and Thich Minh Chau. These studies, as well as recent work by Analayo, Marcus Bingenheimer and Mun-keat Choong, have shown that the essential doctrinal content of the Pali Majjhima and Samyutta Nikayas and the Chinese Madhyama and Samyukta Agamas is mostly the same, (with, as Analayo notes, "occasional divergence in details").

According to scholars such as Rupert Gethin and Peter Harvey, the oldest recorded teachings are contained in the first four Nikayas of the Sutta Pitaka and their various parallels in other languages, together with the main body of monastic rules, which survive in the various versions of the patimokkha. Scholars have also claimed that there is a core within this core, referring to some poems and phrases which seem to be the oldest parts of the Sutta Pitaka.

The reliability of these sources, and the possibility to draw out a core of oldest teachings, is a matter of dispute. According to Tillman Vetter, the comparison of the oldest extant texts "does not just simply lead to the oldest nucleus of the doctrine." At best, it leads to

According to Vetter, inconsistencies remain, and other methods must be applied to resolve those inconsistencies. Because of this, scholars such as Edward Conze and A.K. Warder have argued that only the material which is common to both the Sthavira and the Mahasamghika canons can be seen as the most authentic, since they were the first communities after the first schism. The problem is that there is little material surviving from the Mahasamghika school. However, what we do have, such as the Mahasamghika pratimoksha and vinaya, is mostly consistent in doctrine with the Sthavira texts. Other Mahasamghika sources are the Mahavastu and (possibly) the Śālistamba Sūtra, both of which also contains phrases and doctrines that are found in the Sthavira canons.

Further exemplary studies are the study on descriptions of "liberating insight" by Lambert Schmithausen, the overview of early Buddhism by Tilmann Vetter, the philological work on the four truths by K.R. Norman, the textual studies by Richard Gombrich, and the research on early meditation methods by Johannes Bronkhorst.

Scholarly positions

According to Schmithausen, three positions held by scholars of Buddhism can be distinguished regarding the possibility to extract the earliest Buddhism from the Early Buddhist Texts:

# "Stress on the fundamental homogeneity and substantial authenticity of at least a considerable part of the Nikayic materials;"
# "Skepticism with regard to the possibility of retrieving the doctrine of earliest Buddhism;"
# "Cautious optimism in this respect."

Optimism regarding the early Buddhist texts

In his history of Indian Buddhism (1988), Etienne Lamotte argues that while it "is impossible to say with certainty" what the doctrine of the historical Buddha was, "it is nonetheless a fact that, in order to appreciate early Buddhism, the only valid evidence - or indication - which we possess is the basic agreement between the Nikayas on the one hand and the Agamas on the other".

Likewise, Hajime Nakamura writes in his ''Indian Buddhism'', that "there is no word that can be traced with unquestionable authority to Gotama Sakyamuni as a historical personage, although there must be some sayings or phrases derived from him". Nakamura adds that scholars must critically search the early scriptures for the oldest layer of material to find the "original Buddhism". Nakamura held that some of the earliest material were the ''gathas'' (verses) found in the Suttanipata, as well as the Sagatha-vagga of the Samyutta-Nikaya, the Itivuttakas and the Udanas. These texts use less of the doctrinal material that is developed in other texts, are more likely to promote wilderness solitude over communal living and use terminology which is similar to Jain ideas.

British indologist Rupert Gethin writes that "it is extremely likely" that at least some of the suttas in the four main Nikāyas "are among the oldest surviving Buddhist texts and contain material that goes back directly to the Buddha." Gethin agrees with Lamotte that the doctrinal basis of the Pali Nikayas and Chinese Agamas is "remarkably uniform" and "constitute the common ancient heritage of Buddhism."

Richard Gombrich agrees that the four Nikāyas and the main body of monastic rules present "such originality, intelligence, grandeur and—most relevantly—coherence, that it is hard to see it as a composite work" and thus concludes that it is the work of one genius, even if he agrees that when it comes to the Buddha's biography "we know next to nothing".

Peter Harvey affirms that the four older Nikāyas preserve an "early common stock" which "must derive from his he Buddha’steachings" because the overall harmony of the texts suggest a single authorship, even while other parts of the Pali canon clearly originated later.

The British indologist A. K. Warder writes that "we are on safe ground only with those texts the authenticity of which is admitted by all schools of buddhism (including the Mahayana, who admit the authenticity of the early canons as well as their own texts) not with texts only accepted by certain schools." Warder adds that when the extant material of the Tipitakas of the early Buddhist schools is examined "we find an agreement which is substantial, though not complete" and that there is a central body of sutras "which is so similar in all known versions that we must accept these as so many recensions of the same original texts."

Alexander Wynne has also argued for the historical authenticity of the early buddhist texts (contra skeptics like Gregory Schopen) based on the internal textual evidence found inside them as well as archaeological and inscriptional evidence. As noted by T.W. Rhys Davids, Wynne points out the pali texts depict a pre-Asokan north India and he also cites KR Norman who argues that they show no Sinhalese prakrit additions. Reviewing the literature by figures such as Frauwallner, Wynne argues that the pali suttas reached Sri Lanka by 250 BCE and that they preserved certain details about fifth century north India (such as that Uddaka Rāmaputta lived near Rajagrha). Wynne concludes:

The corresponding pieces of textual material found in the canons of the different sects – especially the literature of the Pāli school, which was more isolated than the others – probably go back to pre-sectarian times. It is unlikely that these correspondences could have been produced by the joint endeavour of different Buddhist sects, for such an undertaking would have required organisation on a scale which was simply inconceivable in the ancient world. We must conclude that a careful examination of early Buddhist literature can reveal aspects of the pre-Aśokan history of Indian Buddhism.

Pessimism

One of the early Western skeptics was French indologist Émile Senart, who argued in his ''Essai sur la legende du Buddha'' (1875) that the legends of Buddha's life were derived from pre-Buddhist myths of solar deities.

The late Edward Conze held that there was an "absence of hard facts" regarding the first period of Buddhism and regarding the teachings of the Buddha, "none of His sayings is preserved in its original form." Since we only possess a small fraction of the Buddhist literature that must have circulated during the early period, Conze held that all the scholarly attempts to reconstruct the 'original' teachings were "all mere guesswork" because "that which we have may have been composed at any time during the first 500 years" and "there is no objective criterion which would allow us to single out those elements in the record which go back to the Buddha Himself." Conze argues that comparative study using the sources of different schools could give us some knowledge of the pre-sectarian period doctrine, but he adds that such knowledge might not take us to the earliest period after the Buddha's nirvana, which is a period that is "shrouded in mystery and to which we cannot penetrate."

Japanese Buddhologist Kogen Mizuno argues in his "Buddhist Sutras" (1982) that the material we possess may not contain the actual words of the Buddha because "they were not recorded as he spoke", but compiled after his death and also because they do not survive in the original language (some form of Magadhi Prakrit) but "transmitted in other Indic languages of later periods, and without doubt conscious and unconscious changes in the Buddha's words were made during several centuries of oral transmission." Mizuno does note that Pali is the oldest of these, but it is still different from old Magadhi and it is from a different region (Western India).

Ronald M. Davidson, a scholar of tantric Buddhism, while acknowledging that most scholars agree that the early community maintained and transmitted a rough body of sacred literature, writes that "we have little confidence that much, if any, of surviving Buddhist scripture is actually the word of the historical Buddha." His view is that:

More persuasively, the Buddhist order in India might be considered the greatest scriptural composition community in human history. Given the extraordinary extent of the material passing at any one time under rubric of the “word of the Buddha,” we might simply pause and acknowledge that Indian Buddhists were extraordinarily facile litterateurs.

The American scholar Gregory Schopen holds that "we cannot know anything definite about the actual doctrinal content of the nikäya/ägama literature much before the fourth century C.E." Schopen is very critical of modern Buddhist studies because of its preference for literary evidence that "in most cases cannot actually be dated and that survives only in very recent manuscript traditions" that have been "heavily edited" and were intended as normative not historical accounts. Schopen believes that the preference for texts over archeology and epigraphy is a mistake and that it is Buddhist epigraphy which are the earliest written sources. Regarding the textual sources, Schopen holds that even the oldest sources such as the Pali canon, "cannot be taken back further than the last quarter of the first century B.C.E, the date of the Alu-vihāra redaction," but that actually it is not until the 5th or 6th centuries CE "that we can know anything definite about the actual contents of this canon." He notes that references to ''Tipitaka'' and ''Nikaya'' date from much later periods than the Asokan era (such as Kaniska's reign). Only a few texts have been identified in Asoka's edicts (such as his Bhabra Edict), but these are all short verse texts and are nothing like the suttas of the first and second Nikayas. Schopen concludes that it is only "from the end of the fourth century, that some of the doctrinal content of Hinayana canonical literature can finally be definitely dated and actually verified."

Regarding the view of comparative critical scholars that agreement between the different sectarian texts points to a common early source, Schopen counters that since this kind of higher criticism is already being done on texts which belong to "uniformly late stages of the literary tradition." Schopen believes instead that the agreement was produced by the sharing of literature and ideas between the different sects at a later date. Schopen defines this position as:

If all known versions of a text or passage agree, that text or passage is probably late; that is, it probably represents the results of the conflation and gradual leveling and harmonization of earlier existing traditions.

Citing Bareau and Wassilieff, he holds that it is just as likely that textual agreement among the different canons was produced by parallel development and contact between the different Indian traditions.

Schayer's view of an alternate tradition

A separate stance has been taken by Polish scholar Stanislaw Schayer, who argued in the 1930s that the Nikayas preserve elements of an archaic form of Buddhism which is close to Brahmanical beliefs, and survived in the Mahayana tradition. As noted by Alexander Wynne, Schayer drew on passages "in which "consciousness" ( viññana) seems to be the ultimate reality or substratum (e.g. A I.10), as well as the Saddhatu Sutra, which is not found in any canonical source but is cited in other Buddhist texts." According to Schayer, contrary to popular opinion, the Theravada and Mahayana traditions may be "divergent, but equally reliable records of a pre-canonical Buddhism which is now lost forever." The Mahayana tradition may have preserved a very old, "pre-Canonical" tradition, which was largely, but not completely, left out of the Theravada-canon. Schayer searched in the early texts for ideas that contradict the dominant doctrinal positions of the early canon. According to Schayer, these ideas have

Regamy has identified four points which are central to Schayer's reconstruction of precanonical Buddhism:

# The Buddha was considered as an extraordinary being, in whom ultimate reality was embodied, and who was an incarnation of the mythical figure of the tathagata;
# The Buddha's disciples were attracted to his spiritual charisma and supernatural authority;
# Nirvana was conceived as the attainment of immortality, and the gaining of a deathless sphere from which there would be no falling back. This nirvana, as a transmundane reality or state, is incarnated in the person of the Buddha;
# Nirvana can be reached because it already dwells as the inmost "consciousness" of the human being. It is a consciousness which is not subject to birth and death.

According to Ray, Schayer has shown a second doctrinal position alongside that of the more dominant tradition, one likely to be of at least equivalent, if not of greater, antiquity.

According to Edward Conze, Schayer's views are "merely a tentative hypothesis" and that it is also possible that these ideas later entered Buddhism, as a concession to "popular demand, just as the lower goal of birth in heaven (''svarga'') was admitted side by side with Nirvana." Conze thought that both were equally possible.

Teachings of earliest Buddhism

The ''Dhammacakkappavattana Sutta'' is regarded by the Buddhist tradition as the first discourse of the Buddha. Scholars have noted some persistent problems with this view. Originally the text may only have pointed at "the middle way" as being the core of the Buddha's teaching, which pointed to the practice of ''dhyana''. This basic term may have been extended with descriptions of the eightfold path, itself a condensation of a longer sequence. Some scholars believe that under pressure from developments in Indian religiosity, which began to see "liberating insight" as the essence of ''moksha'', the four noble truths,_''Mara_(demon)">Death_

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